Put On Your (Last) Dancing Shorts

Hey Collectors,

Earlier this week we had a chance to see the Shohei Ohtani 50/50 home run ball up close, as Ken Goldin took it to LA to show off to potential buyers. The final hammer price will likely fall just-a-bit-outside of our budget, given bids are north of $2M with five days to go, so we were appreciative of the chance to be in the same room as the ball that created a whole new club for baseball’s best (currently with only one member).

Interested in tossing in a bid yourself? The Athletic has everything you need to know.

Put On Your (Last) Dancing Shorts

The Chicago Bulls home whites Michael Jordan wore during the 1998 “Last Dance” NBA Finals, photo-matched to Games 3, 4 and 5, are heading to SCP Auctions, with estimates north of $500,000. The most recent game-worn item to sell from those Finals was Jordan’s Game 1 jersey, which took in $10.1M back in 2022. Will that buyer be a bidder at this auction? Maybe, but given the jersey is red and these shorts are white, they’ll sure look silly wearing both at once.

The auction kicks off November 6th, and Sports Collectors Daily has the details.

Missing! The Most Famous Triple Auto in the World

The hobby has been on high alert since Topps began shipping their Team USA Topps NOW cards featuring LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, with everybody hoping to get the biggest chase in recent memory- the 1/1 triple auto. More than 588,000 “lotto ticket” base cards were purchased, and all have shipped, begging the question, where the heck is the card everyone was after?

Most likely, per Ben Burrows from cllct, the card is still sealed in a pack, and probably currently listed on eBay, where recent sales for unopened packs have crested $3,000.

Iron Throne Nets 29,800,000,000 Nickels

From King James to the Six Kingdoms of Westeros, as the infamous Iron Throne at the center of HBO’s Game of Thrones sold this week at Heritage Auctions, netting $1.49M. The throne wasn’t the only GOT prop to bring in big bucks, which boasted multiple six-figure sales, including Jon Snow’s sword Longclaw (which went for for $400,000), Cersei’s red velvet dress ($137,500), and a Jamie Lannister suit of armor ($275,000).

Complex broke down the auction, which brought in $21M for Heritage.

Every Tuesday is Mail Day

All of the items showcased above, from $2M+ balls to $500,000+ shorts, fall outside of the budget of the common collector. What doesn’t? A relic card featuring a tiny swatch of mylar taken from the infamous inflatable used during the Balloon Boy Hoax of 2012. If that sentence sounds both nonsensical and intriguing, you’d enjoy this week’s Mail Day, where writer JR Fickle suggested the cards were poised to appreciate, after he uncovered that the rest of the balloon not used by Topps was recently thrown away. . .

We’re monitoring eBay prices, which haven’t moved much since Fickle’s investigative work, so take his ‘investment’ advice with a grain of salt, but still read his weekly newsletter, which is the most entertaining 3 minutes in collectibles.